Centripetal narratives under crisis? Media framing and the Europeanization of economic discourse in Portugal, Spain, and Ireland

This article examines whether and how national media in Portugal, Spain, and Ireland converged in their interpretation of European economic issues during the Eurozone crisis. Building on research on the European Public Sphere, it analyses how national media located political authority, responsibility, and problem-solving capacity under conditions of intensified EU involvement in domestic economic governance. Conceptually, the article distinguishes between relational convergence, referring to cross-national similarity in media narratives, and directional convergence, capturing within-country shifts in narrative orientation along the national–EU axis. Empirically, the analysis draws on a comparative framing study of 6,070 economic news articles published in six quality newspapers between 2002 and 2015. Narrative interpretation across five framing dimensions—Problem, Cause, Responsibility, Consequences, and Solution—is operationalised through an original Convergence Index capturing the balance between EU-centred and nationally centred narratives. The findings show no generalised relational convergence following the onset of the crisis. Instead, cross-national dispersion in narrative orientation increases in the post-crisis period. Directional convergence towards EU-centred narratives occurs selectively: Spanish and Irish media display modest centripetal shifts, whereas Portuguese coverage follows a contrasting trajectory of systematic re-nationalisation. Overall, these results qualify crisis-driven expectations of communicative integration. While the Eurozone crisis intensified diagnostic and accountability-oriented framing across national media, it did not generate stable or cumulative convergence in narrative interpretation. Media convergence thus emerges as a differentiated and non-linear process, with important implications for how the communicative foundations of a European Public Sphere should be assessed under conditions of systemic stress.